


Live this Live Better than the Last

by mpatientdreamr



Category: Charmed
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-15
Updated: 2012-07-15
Packaged: 2017-11-10 00:53:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/460438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mpatientdreamr/pseuds/mpatientdreamr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most people didn't have memories of the day they were born.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Live this Live Better than the Last

Most people didn’t have memories of the day they were born. For that fact, most people didn’t have memories of the last time they died, either. Chris was both blessed and cursed to remember both, albeit in a sort of hazy way.

He tilted his shot glass and sang softly to himself, “Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you…”

Tomorrow, he would officially be older than himself. He snorted, then laughed, startling the bartender, who glanced around nervously for his boss. Chris rolled his eyes, even as he had to admit to himself that getting drunk in his mother’s own bar probably wasn’t the smartest move he’d ever made. P3 remained one of the hottest clubs in the city, despite the restaurant taking most of his mother’s time. 

Chris scrubbed a hand over his face, relegating his mother to the back of his mind as he wondered what tomorrow would be like. Would he still have strange flashes of intuition that didn’t come from his own experiences? Would he still remember what it felt like to cry at his mother’s grave even as he sat across from her at breakfast? Would he finally, irrevocably be alone in his own head? For some reason, he doubted it. The double vision that came with the déjà vu maybe would stop but the memories…no, the memories and all the baggage they carried with them were his, now. 

The jammed crowd parted like the Red Sea and Chris saw his mother striding purposely towards him, mouth unsmiling and eyes worried. He sighed, setting the empty glass down. Honestly, it wouldn’t have mattered where he drank, his mother was a touchstone in the nightclub industry in San Francisco and she would have heard about it sooner rather than later.

“You said you were going home,” she announced, coming to a stop at his elbow.

He glanced over the club, then towards the office that Aunt Paige had undoubtedly orbed her into, where his other self, the one that died the day he was born, had slept him when he came back to save the future. Chris did a slow blink, possibly too smashed to reason out time travel at the moment and realized his mother was still waiting for him to say something.

He flicked a finger around, then pointed towards the office and offered her a grim grin. “Close enough.”

Her face flickered, softened, and she said, “Chris, honey…”

And she tapered off, just like she always did when it became uncomfortably apparent that he remembered his past life just a little too well. He sighed, toppling over slightly until he could rest his head on her shoulder and her arm came up, hand running down his back. 

“You might have his memories, but he wasn’t you,” she said quietly, so quietly it almost got swallowed up by the crowd.

Chris’s breath caught. His mom never spoke of the other Chris, even though Aunt Phoebe and Aunt Paige told stories about him, sometimes. Aunt Phoebe liked to tell about how Aunt Paige wanted to castrate him while she was goddessized and about the spirit walk that revealed who he really was. Aunt Paige liked to tell the story of Jenny the Genie and complain about his manic drive to save his brother, to save the world, and to keep the future as secret as possible. Even Dad told about jumping through time with him. But mom, she never spoke of him, although Chris knew she had a photo of him playing blocks with Wyatt as a baby tucked away that she didn’t think anyone knew about.

“He was neurotic and paranoid and desperate and, oh, baby, he wasn’t you,” she said, touching his hair. “You might share the same soul, but you haven’t lived the same life. You’re different men.”

“Did you love him?” Chris asked and, damn, but that was a stupid question. He’d found the worn photo with the shaky words, ‘Chris and Wyatt’ scrawled across the back when he was nine and he’d known that that was him, sort of, and his mother had loved him. The question he wanted to ask, had always desperately wanted to ask was, ‘Did you love him better than me?’

“Of course I did,” she said and Chris jerked before he realized she was answering the question he’d asked, not the one he couldn’t. “He was my son, like you and Wyatt are my sons, like Melinda’s my daughter. I could love him no more or no less than I love any of you.”

Chris melted into her a bit, peace swamping him. She had that affect, in all of his memories. “We love you, Mom.”

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Charmed, Chris, a soldier’s last breath is babies being born (Dave Matthews Band)


End file.
